Managing Factors Limiting National Competitiveness to Improve Productivity in Developing Countries

This paper examines socioeconomic factors influencing regional economic competitiveness among South African provinces and Japanese prefectures. The choice of the two countries is motivated by the fact that South Africa as the largest economy in Africa is an example of a successful developing country. As the second largest world economy, Japan represents the perspective of developed economies. For comparative analysis, South Africa and Japan together represent two different stages of national economic development: developing and developed economies. With this background, this paper introduces a new innovation management (IM) framework for regional system of innovation. The IM framework calls for coordination across a wide range of policies including labour policies, education policies, industrial policies, and science and technology policies in the NSI. This paper applies the IM framework to the region of Hokkaido in Japan to assess the activities of innovation actors in managing factors limiting regional competitiveness. Hokkaido is selected among other regions in Japan because it is experiencing similar socioeconomic challenges that are facing many developing countries. For this reason, the experiences of innovation actors in Hokkaido can be applied in developing countries to identify and manage factors limiting competitiveness to improve national productivity.